by Samuel Sykes
“No, no, no, no, no, no, no,” the girl shrieked. Asper heard her scrambling away from them, twisting out of their grasp, raking her fingertips upon the floor as they hauled her out by her ankles. “No, please, not again, not again, not again, I’ve been good, I don’t deserve this, please, please, please, please—”
Pleas, tears, screams. A singular, desperate sound that echoed through the cavern. It was joined by the screams from deeper inside, an endless, unrelenting cacophony marching alongside Asper as she was bodily dragged toward a distant halo of light at the end of the twisted corridor.
Within the ring of light, she saw it. A shadow standing tall, hands folded neatly behind its back.
And within the shadow, she saw them. A pair of lights, blood red and fire hot. Stars in hell.
The fear that had been bearing down upon her since she stared praying grew at the sight of him. It settled upon her shoulders. It pressed upon her neck. It ate the anger from her body, it drank the breath from her lungs.
But even beneath its weight, even through the half-formed prayers in her head and the pounding in her heart, she could still hear her curse herself.
Not now, you idiot, she snarled inwardly. Not in front of Nai. She gritted her teeth, felt her neck strain against the weight as she tried to raise it. He’s not a god. There are no gods. Not on earth. Look at him.
It hurt to move her head, hurt to even think about it. But she forced herself to do both.
Look.
She did.
He did not.
Sheraptus stood, head bowed beneath the black iron crown upon his brow, staring intently into his palm. With one long finger, he gently pushed about tiny black fragments in his hand, attempting to piece together a charred puzzle.
It wasn’t relief she felt to be denied his gaze as she was shoved past him. Her fear settled firmly upon her back and she felt extraordinarily heavy at that point. A sudden anger rose inside her, leaving no room for breath. That he could do what he did to her, to Nai, to the other girl, and not even look when his victims were paraded before him was … was …
She had no words for it. Only desires. Only a yearning to scream, a yearning to break free from her captor’s iron grip and lunge at him with an arm that throbbed with a pain she wanted nothing more than to share.
Those desires left her, though, along with the air in her lungs, as the netherling twisted her about, placed a palm upon her belly and slammed her against the wall of the round, cavernous chamber. Sense left with the wind and she scarcely even noticed her arms being raised so high above her head as to pull her to the tips of her toes. It returned, however, with the eager snapping of metal as manacles were fastened about her wrists and she was left to hang against the wall like a macabre piece of art.
Her captor stepped back, met her scowl with cold eyes and tense muscles, as if challenging Asper to give her a reason to use those gauntleted fists folded over her chest. The priestess offered nothing more than a glare. The netherling, denied, snorted and left.
Nai had more to give.
“Please no, please stop, please no, please stop,” she chanted the words, as though they would gain power the more she spoke them. “Please, please, please, please …”
The netherling holding her took no notice of her pleas as she forced the girl into a similar set of manacles on the opposite side of the chamber’s door. Nai seemed to forget Asper was there entirely, shaking her head to add gesture to desperate incantation.
And no one seemed to notice the murals upon the walls.
They were almost illegible, smeared by soot from torches haphazardly jammed into the wall, scratched by scenes of struggle or boredom-induced violence. But Asper could make out a few images: men marching to war against towering black shapes, green, reptilian things marching beside them. Amidst them all strode great stone colossi, dressed in robes, hands outstretched.
She had seen these before, she realized: the great stone monoliths upon Teji, as imposing in paint as they were in person.
They marched into oblivion, crushing black shapes beneath their treads, sending white shapes fleeing before their authoritative palms. She followed them as they marched across the walls, displaying banners of many gods, holding weapons high. They descended toward the back of the chamber, the mural lost in the darkness that was held at bay by the torches, save for but a few strands of crimson paint that stretched out of the gloom.
She squinted to see them, to make them out.
Are those … tentacles?
The scream that burst out of the darkness shook her back to her senses. An inhuman shrieked boiled out of the back of the cavern, echoed through her skull as it did through the chamber. She turned away, shut her eyes, instinctively tried to clasp her hands over her ears even as the chains held her tight, chiding her with a rattle of links.
They faded, eventually. She opened her eyes. The breath immediately left her once more as she stared into a pair of eyes alight with crimson fire not a foot away from her.
“How did this happen?” Sheraptus asked.
He thrust the blackened pieces upon his palm at her. It had once been a living thing, she deduced by noting the charred remains of a jointed leg, even if everything else was soot and charcoal.
She looked from the remains to him. She should have cursed at him, she knew. Spat in his face, maybe. All she could form, as his mouth twisted into an expectant frown, was a single word.
“Huh?”
“Why does this thing exist?” His voice was eerily ponderous, as though he were talking to the blackened husk and not her. “It was so small that I barely had to move my fingers, barely had to think and …”
He turned his hand over, let the fragments fall to ashes.
“It simply turned to nothing,” he whispered. “Why?”
The fire burning in his eyes could not burn nearly hot enough to obscure the glimmer in his stare, the sort of excited flashing of a boy with a new toy right before he accidentally breaks it. It unnerved her to see it, even without the malicious red glow that strained to obscure it. But she forced herself to look. She forced herself to speak.
“Because you killed it.”
He frowned, the glimmer waning, as though he had hoped that wasn’t the case.
“Why?” he asked.
For lack of anything else, she simply stared.
Is this it? she asked herself. Is this the man that thinks he’s a god? He doesn’t even know why he kills. He’s not a god. He has …
“Nothing.”
“What?”
She wasn’t even aware that the word had slipped out until he frowned at her. After she was, though, the rest came easily.
“You killed it because you have nothing else. You killed it because that’s what you do. You destroy. You hurt people.” She drew in a staggering breath, but the words came flooding out, impossible to stop. “Because whatever made you, they made you with nothing else but that purpose. You don’t know why, you don’t know how. You know nothing but pain, and without pain, you are nothing.”
It didn’t feel good to say it. It felt necessary, as necessary as the deep breath that came after she said it. It came into her lungs clean, despite the soot, the heat, and the suffering surrounding her. That felt good.
It would have felt better if Sheraptus hadn’t smiled broadly and spoke.
“Exactly.”
She recoiled, the very words striking her just when she thought he couldn’t say anything more depraved. He didn’t notice her reaction, he didn’t notice she was there as he turned around and made a grand, sweeping gesture.
“Created to destroy, created to kill, that makes sense,” he said to the cavern as he paced about its circular length. “Weapons need to be forged. Nethra has to be channeled. But this?” He looked down at the black, sooty smear on the floor. “What purpose is there in something so weak?”
His gaze drifted to Nai, hanging helplessly in her chains. Asper felt her bowels turn to water as though he had looked at her in
stead. Her feet scrabbled against the floor, the chains pulling her back, forcing her to watch helplessly as he reached out, a pair of long, probing fingers gently brushing against Nai’s cheek.
“What use is there for such a thing …” he whispered.
The fire in his eyes smoldered, painting Nai’s face crimson. She let out a soft whimper, daring not to speak, daring not to move as his fingers drifted lower, across her throat, toward her chest.
“I DON’T KNOW!”
It wasn’t a lie. She didn’t know the answer. She didn’t know why she screamed so suddenly. And she didn’t care. Sheraptus turned away from Nai, his gaze dimming to a faint glow. Asper watched long enough to see the girl go slack in her bonds again before turning to lock her gaze upon his and his upon hers.
“No one knows,” she continued. “The Gods don’t tell us when we’re born.”
“Then why?”
“Why what?”
“Why do anything you do?” he asked. “Why call out to gods if you can’t see them, if you can’t hear them and they don’t talk to you?”
“They do. We have scriptures, prayers, hymnals, ritual. They tell us how to live, what to do,” she paused to put emphasis on her next words, “why we shouldn’t kill and—”
“Those are not gods. They do not create, they were created.”
“By the Gods.”
“How?”
“They told us—”
“Then why do they not tell you now? What do these rituals and things do but ask more questions? Where do you get answers?”
“They … they …” The words came slowly, like a knife being drawn out of her flesh. “They might not give us answers. The Gods might not even talk to us.” She said it aloud for the first time. “They might not even exist.”
It hurt more than she thought.
“They do.”
Hurt turned to confusion the moment he spoke.
“Where else could all this have come from?” he asked, shaking his head. “We have no trees in the Nether, no sand, no oceans.” He sighed. “No gods. But here? You have everything. And for what? What does it do for you? What is its purpose?”
“Not everything has to have a purpose,” she said. “Some things are there not to kill or be killed, but simply to be … right? They are there to be protected, cherished.” Her gaze drifted to Nai. “The Gods can’t possibly watch over everything.”
“But that doesn’t make sense,” Sheraptus snapped. “If trees are not created to be made into boats, then why are they here? What is metal if not to be made into swords? If something is meant to be, why is it so fragile?” He resumed his pacing, rubbing his crown. “All things must be created for a reason. Everything must have a purpose. What is theirs?”
He whirled about. The fires in his eyes were stoked with desperation, leaping with such intensity that they seemed to engulf his face, leaving nothing but jagged teeth twisted in a grimace. He thrust a finger at her.
“What is yours?”
She wanted to look away, away from those eyes that had stared at her, away from those teeth that had grinned at her, away from that finger that had—
Look at him, the thought leapt to her mind unbidden. It resounded with conviction from a place she did not know. Look at him and know that he’s not what they think he is. It held her head high, even as it wanted to bow. Look at him and know that he’s not what he thinks he is. It made her draw in a long, clean breath. Look at him. And he won’t look at her.
“Perhaps,” she whispered, “it’s to tell you all this.”
The fires in his eyes waned. Between shudders of crimson, flashes of white broke through. And in them, she could see something that had been stained by flame for a long, long time.
Desperation.
Fear.
A hope that somehow, some way, everything that he was thinking was utterly and terribly wrong.
“How do you know?” he asked.
She shook her head, her chains rattling softly. “It’s never clear. Not without suffering.”
“Suffering?”
“Only with suffering comes understanding.” She closed her eyes, letting the truth of that settle upon her, atop the fear and the anger. “Great suffering.”
He nodded solemnly. That which she felt within her she saw within him as his eyes smoldered, sputtered into empty whites.
“They come to you with suffering,” he said, “when they are needed. That is why you called to them,” he hesitated before continuing, “that night.”
To stare into the white eyes of this man, as she had stared into the red eyes of the man who had violated her, should have been enough to destroy her. She should have collapsed, slumped in her chains, lost all will to raise her head again. But there was something in these eyes, something bright and vivid, that burned even more brightly than fire.
This man was no god. This man could be made to see what he had done.
She looked past him. Nai hung limply in her manacles, drawing in sharp, short breaths.
For her sake, Asper had to believe that.
“How much?” It was the edge in his voice that seized her attention, the glimmer in his eye that held it. “How much suffering before they appear?”
“I don’t—” She paused, reconsidered. “Much,” she replied softly. “There is much suffering, much regret, much penance.”
“And one cannot begin … without the other.”
In the instant he turned away from her, she saw it. In the corner of his eye, as though it had been hiding from her the whole time, there was a little too much of something. Perhaps it was too much of an eager glimmer in his eye, too easy a smile that came with too much knowing.
She saw it.
And in that instant, she knew that whatever had left him, it wasn’t cruelty.
“No,” she whispered.
Whether she had heard Asper or the sound of Sheraptus approaching, Nai looked up. What it took Asper until now to see, she found in an instant. Her face twisted up into a grimace, her hands clenched, she bit her lower lip so hard that blood gushed readily.
“No. No.” Nai shook her head, fervor increasing with each word. “No, no, no, no, no.” She was all but flailing as he approached her, her chains rattling wildly, her heels scraping furiously against the floor as she tried to back away. “NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!”
“Wait! WAIT!” Asper called after him. “This isn’t what I meant! This isn’t what you—”
“It is,” Sheraptus said softly. “It makes perfect sense. Why would gods come unless called? Unless the need was great?”
“I didn’t do anything!” Nai wailed. The cloth of her slippers wore through in a moment and soon, she was painting the floor with her blood as her feet desperately scrabbled. “I didn’t. I DIDN’T! I’ve been good! I … I screamed! Please, no. Please, please, please, please—”
“Stop!” Asper cried out, hurling herself at him. The chains caught her, chuckled in the rattle of links as they pulled her back to the wall. “This isn’t what I meant! Stop! Stop!”
The metal of her manacles groaned, growing weary of her futile attempts. They tugged her back to the wall, pleading in creaking metal to spare herself the torment. She spoke louder to be heard over him, screaming wildly at him with all manner of pleas, all manner of curses.
Between the chains and herself, she couldn’t hear the sound of metal sizzling, of stone cracking.
Nai’s wailing ceased as he came upon her, looking her over with wide, glimmering eyes. She fell still in her chains, as though if she held just still enough, stayed just silent enough, he might move on. Even then, though, she drew in wheezing breaths, sniffling tears through her nostrils with each gasp.
Sheraptus stood there, hands folded behind his back, calmly studying her. Asper held her breath, watching, waiting, praying.
Humble do I pray and humble do I ask—
Slowly, he unfolded his hands, raised them up to frame Nai’s face delicately as she winced.
You who gave u
p Your body so that we might know—
His fingers splayed out slowly, each joint creaking as they did, like the long legs of great purple spiders, the tips gently settling upon her temples and cheeks.
I know I don’t deserve it, I know I doubted You but—
“Please,” Nai whispered.
Please—
Sheraptus smiled gently.
Please—
The glimmer in his eyes became a spark.
PLEASE.
And he spoke a word.
Nai’s scream was lost in the violent, laughing crackle of electricity. Asper watched, eyes wide, yearning to be blinded by the flashes of electricity that leapt from his fingertips in laughing lashes, sharing some sick joke with Nai’s flesh that only it found funny.
“STOP!” Nai screamed, struggling to hold onto language. “STOP! PLEASE!”
“Don’t beg me,” Sheraptus said gently. “Them. You have to ask them to come.”
Smoke came in gray plumes, mercilessly refusing to hide the grimace of her face painted by flashes of blue, the shedding of her cloth as electric spears rent her garments. Asper could look away, to pray, to do anything.
And without thought, without prayer, without blinking, she began to walk forward.
“HELP! PLEASE!” Nai wailed. “TALANAS! DAEON! GALATAUR!”
“There we are,” Sheraptus cooed encouragingly. “Just a little more now.”
The flashes grew stronger, their laughter louder, their macabre jokes increasingly hilarious as they plucked at her skin. Hair smoked, stood on end. Her lips curled back to expose gums. A nipple blackened amidst a mass of twitching flesh.
The chains caught Asper, tried to pull her back. She continued to walk forward, unthinking, unfeeling. The searing of her wrist, she did not notice. The shattering of stone behind her, she did not hear.
“Louder, now, louder,” Sheraptus coaxed. “It can’t be too much longer now.”
What tore out of Nai’s mouth was without words, without emotion. It was the kind of raw, vocal bile offered up when there was nothing left within her. From deep in the darkness beyond the chamber, more voices lent theirs to hers, more screaming joining with hers.